Friday, January 30, 2009

www.bea.gov:Gross Domestic Product -- Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to advance estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third ...

related:TIME.com: GDP Drop: Not As Bad As Feared, But Worse Is Ahead — The government reported that fourth quarter GDP contracted at an annual rate of 3.8%. That does not approach the 7.8% in the second quarter of 1980 or the 10.4% post-war record set in the first quarter of 1958...

Calculated Risk: GDP Declines 3.8% in Q4 — I'll have more a little later ... From the BEA: GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: FOURTH QUARTER 2008 (ADVANCE) From MarketWatch: U.S. Q4 GDP down 3.8%, inventories limit downturn The U.S. economy contracted at a 3.8% annualized rate in the fourth quarter but the decline would have been worse except that the government counts an unwanted buildup of goods ...

Peter Cohan / BloggingStocks: Great news: GDP shrinks only 3.8% in Q4 — Filed under: Economic data , Politics , Recession , Financial Crisis The final quarter of the great national nightmare -- our 43rd president -- ended with the worst quarterly performance of our GDP since 1982, when Ronald Reagan was in office. The 3.8% decline in Q4 was the worst quarterly result since a 6.4% annualized plunge in the first ...

Angry senator wants pay cap on Wall Street ‘idiots’ — WASHINGTON (CNN) — One day after President Obama ripped Wall Street executives for their “shameful” decision to hand out $18 billion in bonuses in 2008, Congress may finally have had enough. — An angry U.S. senator introduced legislation Friday …

Appearing this morning on CNN, however, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani stridently defended the practice of enormous bonuses untethered to actual performance, warning that ending the tradition “really will create unemployment” ...

David Goldman / Inner Workings:Make them buy stock -- Rather than claw back already-paid bonuses of about $18 billion, as some grandstanding Democrats suggest, Wall Street firms should issue common stock to employees in that amount and require them to invest the after-tax portion of their cash bonuses in the stock of their firms. The proceeds should be used to repay the government for funds injected into their firms. That will satisfy the public, which quite reasonably objects to the use of its tax money to compensate bankers who make an order of magnitude or two more than the average taxpayer, and it will incentivize the bankers to work hard and manage risks well...

It is refreshing to have a president capable of telling economic truths...

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Portfolio:Cuts Coming Next Week at ‘The Wall Street Journal’ -- When Gerard Baker starts his new job as The Wall Street Journal's new deputy editor in chief next Wednesday, he'll have a lot of names to learn. But not quite as many as if he'd started sooner.

According to multiple sources within and close to the Journal, the newsroom is due to undergo another round of personnel cuts late next week. It's unclear exactly how many employees will be affected, but two sources put the number of people being targeted at 50...